It’s been a busy year. So much has happened. Summer break will be a time for me to unwind my thoughts. In the meantime, here’s a short story I wrote.

The concept of rebirth is common to many religions. From the ashes of his past, the man is given a chance to live again and redeem himself. In some ways, I feel reborn as I write these words. It has been too long since I last felt the desire to give some semblance of permanence to my thoughts. Days became weeks, and weeks became months; the fun times rolled by with barely a whisper and, with little fanfare, a full year had vanished into my past. How appropriately ironic it is that the best year of my life should go completely unrecorded here.

So yes, I am still alive and well. The last time I updated, I was a wide-eyed freshman about to embark on a quest for knowledge and liberation. Today, I am a sophomore, slightly battle-hardened and a smidgen worse for wear, back home in Singapore for the short winter break. Having spent the last summer interning in the Silicon Valley, this is the first time Iâ€ve been home since taking off a year ago.

It is an odd feeling to be back – the feeling you get when you try to watch an old VHS tape you found in your closet and it starts to play from the middle. What were you doing when you stopped the video? Does that point of time bear any significance or is it just random chance? And just what the heck is a VHS tape? Vague recollections swirl at the back of your mind teasingly, but try as you might the answers are not forthcoming. Perhaps your unconscious is just playing a trick on you. After all, records of our past thoughts and feelings exist only in our gullible minds. If history carved in stone tablets could be altered and remade by the ambitious and the delusional, then our inner past might as well be entirely fictional. Indeed, it probably is.

If we truly have the power to (re)invent our past, then let us use that power for good. Believe that you are kind, moral, and just, so that your future conscious decisions reflect your new self. Though I am and have been an atheist all my life, I too operate on beliefs. I believe in my intuitions under the baseless assumption that my unconscious has noticed something that I have not. I believe in my feelings because questioning them leads one on an endless recursion of self-doubt and cynicism. I believe in the people I love because it feels wonderful for your feet to be grounded even if there always exists an irrefutable non-zero probability that you are stepping in quicksand.

When you say you believe, you allow the possibility of disappointment. And from disappointment or betrayal, there may come despair. Such is the way of the mind.
— Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Haruki Murakami

To believe is to make a completely rational decision to suspend rationality when it proves counterproductive. If we refused to believe that the images sent by our eyes to our brains reflect the realities of a real physical world, then we would quickly find ourselves paralyzed into inaction by the epistemological void. To believe is not to deny the possibility that we live in the Matrix, but to make the sensible bet that we do not. A smart gambler weighs the odds against the rewards and maximizes expected returns. Of course, sometimes the odds simply do not make sense, which is why I remain an atheist. Still, I acknowledge and embrace the power of believing. Sometimes, our personal experiences compel us to attempt irrational feats, and that is simply what must be done.

At this point, the few of you who stumbled upon this long lost relic of Internet past are probably bewildered by this senseless soliloquy. Rest assured, my year at Stanford has not driven me mad, nor am I under the influence of any mind-altering substance. I just figured that itâ€s been a long while and some rambling would do me well. I suppose this bit of drivel on belief shall suffice for now. Maybe Iâ€ll write more if my Muse decides to show herself once more. In the meantime, please watch Contact if you havenâ€t already. It was the movie from my teens that reshaped my thoughts on beliefs.

The day has finally come. I can hardly believe it. In a few short hours, I will be on a flight to…Incheon, South Korea, followed by a long transit before finally arriving at SFO. I will spend the next four years at Stanford and hopefully graduate with a few pieces of laminated paper.

My mind is kind of in a messed-up place right now, so that’s all I have to say for now. In the mean time, watch this awesome YouTube series.

See you in California.

Scandinavia is not the most exciting place in the world but it has some beautiful sights. I spent ten nights last month in Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland with my trusty Canon 400D and these are the results.

Helsinki, Finland

From an outsider’s perspective, it’s kind of weird to me that Finland is not officially considered part of Scandinavia, especially when many souvenir shops in Norway were selling this shirt.

I guess it’s because Finland took a break from Sweden and had a century-long fling with tsarist Russia, but then Russia got addicted to Marxism and by the time Finland realized the whole thing had been a huge mistake Sweden had moved on. I may or may not be butchering Nordic history here.

Objectively speaking, Finland is probably the most boring country of the four. Helsinki, the capital, is about 1/3 the size of Singapore excluding water and has a population of just six hundred thousand compared to Singapore’s five million. On the weekends, many parts of the city (e.g. office areas, schools) feel deserted and wouldn’t look out of place in a movie about a post-apocalyptic or post-Rapture world. There are next to no tourist attractions in the city and the biggest one is probably the department store Stockmann in the city centre. Not quite impressive if you are used to Asia’s modern mega-malls.

I think this is the only LV boutique in the country

There is an abundance of statues though

You know your city is dull when a bunch of steel pipes is considered a tourist spot

Based on a casual observation, life in Helsinki seems slow and small-town even though it’s really one of the larger Scandinavia capitals. It feels like the kind of place where the tour guide would point to some unremarkable house in the woods and say, “That’s our Prime Minister’s home” as if she were talking about the mayor of Springfield (which she really did). Not really my cup of tea.

The unique part of Finland compared to the other three countries is probably the Russian architectures left from its hundred-year history as a part of the Russian Empire. This includes numerous Orthodox churches in a country with a Lutheran majority.

Nice Russian architecture though

The stall owner said they are real

Senate Square was built so that tourists may have a convenient location to board their coaches. True story

Statues of men carrying balls — it’s what all train stations need

The colour and font reminds me of JR East

An ageing relic of glories past

It’s like Japan but with more green stuff on the salmon

Wait a minute… Did I upload the right photos?

Stockholm, Sweden

Stockholm felt a lot… bigger than Helsinki, but it’s really about the same size in terms of land. I suppose it does have a larger population so maybe it feels bigger because things look busier.

Stockholm City Hall, where they give out all the Nobel Prizes other than Peace

The most hideous thing I’ve ever seen made from gold flakes

I was in Stockholm for barely a day and didn’t really get to see much of it. It did feel like a much more cheery place than Helsinki, probably because it was sunny when I was there, but perhaps also because Helsinki’s Russian-influenced buildings project an aura of Soviet-esque dreariness I automatically associate with Cold War movies. I mean Helsinki-Vantaa Airport’s arrival hall feels like a prefab military prison from some Bond movie.

Stockholm Palace

Stockholm on the other hand is much closer to my idea of a scenic European city with nice idyllic riverfronts and neo-classical buildings. Plus Sweden is a kingdom so it has all that crazy European royalty shenanigans that tourists adore. Finland totally missed out on this lucrative business when it decided to become a republic after breaking up with Russia.

Now that’s the Europe I had in mind

Interesting that many of the palace guards are female

This shop sells yaoi manga imported from Japan

Don’t mind me, I’m just a stupid tourist. I’m not a suspicious person. No madam

Oslo, Norway

Travelling around Scandinavia really helps an outsider put into perspective just how huge a clusterfuck the European Union is. Finland, Sweden and Denmark are EU members but only Finland uses euro as its official currency. Norway, Sweden and Denmark all have their own version of krone as their currency and they are worth almost the same except not really.

Shops in Sweden and Denmark accept Euro (notes only) but give change in local krones. Shops in Norway don’t accept euro at all and even though Norway is part of the European Economic Area and uses the same tax-free system for foreign tourists. Sweden is technically obligated to eventually adopt the euro, but there is no deadline so they can hold it off for eternity, which many major politicians and the voters are fully in favour of.

Oslo City Hall

And amongst the Scandinavian countries, Norway is probably the most exceptional one when it comes to (non-)participation in the EU because it has a huge buttload of offshore oil and can do whatever the fuck it pleases. This is probably also why things are insanely expensive in Oslo.

A bottle of coke costs 20 NOK or 3.70 USD at a normal store that is not even in any tourist area, which is almost twice as much as it goes for even in central Tokyo. A regular meal at McDonalds cost 90 NOK (16.60 USD). The same meal cost 60 DKK (11.40 USD) in Copenhagen, 490 yen (6.40 USD) in Japan and 6 SGD (5 USD) in Singapore. The huge difference between Oslo and Copenhagen is what boggles my mind. Really makes Japan prices seem like a bargain in comparison.

For god’s sake, the road in front of the palace is not even paved! It’s a bunch of dirt!

While Norway is technically a monarchy, it only became one after separating from Sweden in 1905. Its king (a random dude they found on the streets…almost) is therefore rather poor, money-wise, and his palace looks really sad and is probably out-matched in extravagance by many government buildings in numerous third-world nations. Still, I was told by the tour guide that the people love the royal family very much, unlike those ungrateful Brits.

There was an election when I was there

Live TV coverage of the elections

Before there was Louis Vuitton

Man vs. evil babies

Norway Countryside

I spent most of my time in the countryside of Norway where there are tons of mountains and the clouds look like they are right above your head.

Passing by Utøya

Friendship is magic?

At a pizzeria run by Turkish brothers

Think I saw this in Thor…

Interestingly, I met a young Japanese lady on a working holiday manning the counter at a family-ran hotel in Lærdal, a small town in the mountains. Did not expect that. Apparently many Japanese visit Norway and Scandinavia in the summer. There was also always a female Japanese crew member (who only works there during the summer) on every cruise ship sailing between the Nordic countries.

I suppose if you think about it, Norway is kind of like Japan so maybe Japanese tourists enjoy the familiarity. They both eat whale and tons of salmon, have tons of mountains that are a pain to drive around, have among the lowest in Gini coefficients in the world and… well I guess that’s about it. Still it’s pretty surprising how many times I got to put my Japanese to use in rural Norway (three).

Norway is famous for its fjords, but I think they are overhyped. Sure, they look beautiful and all, but most of the time they don’t look all that different from regular lakes to me.

Entering warp speed

Bergen, Norway

Bergen is the second largest city in Norway behind Oslo. It’s a port city that reminds me of Nagasaki: city centre at the bay area surrounded by mountains with houses built of their sides.

Despite being located next to the gigantic body of water known as the sea, Bergen had a lot of trouble with city fires in the past and built to the ground numerous times, so even its buildings are all relatively new. Its most recent destruction took place during WW2 when a German warship carrying explosives blew up in its harbour by accident and flattened a whole bunch of wooden houses around the bay area. Those people just can’t get a break.

Bergen is a major source of dried cod and for hundreds of years, a monopoly over cod was given to the German Hanseatic League. The Hanseatic League’s presence in Bergen was limited to male traders who were sent there as teenage apprentices and were forbidden from having contact with local girls. They lived together for many years in a bunch of wooden buildings near the docks (some of which are preserved on the World Heritage list) and presumably drank beer all day as I imagine Germans do when they are stuck in a foreign country and not allowed to have fun. Basically it all sounds rather homoerotic.

Glad they are taking fires seriously now

Copenhagen, Denmark

I really liked Copenhagen even though it didn’t like me that much — it rained hail the first day (even though it was technically summer) when I was trying to take a photo of the Little Mermaid statue.

Those white spots are hail

The Danish royal family has a much longer history than both Sweden and Norway (which both used to belong to Denmark) and it really shows in their castle décor. The designs at Rosenborg Castle look like the extravagance you would come to expect from royalties, with treasures from foreign lands and gold everywhere.

The Danish kings knew how to decorate shit

The castle has an underground treasury vault with modern security doors and the whole works.

I like taking pictures of election posters every country I go…

Konservative with a capital K

Tivoli is an amusement park in the middle of Copenhagen and it is the second oldest amusement park in the world. It is nowhere near Disneyland, but definitely way better than Hanayashiki, Japan’s oldest amusement park. The shitty part is that it charges for every single ride in addition to the park entrance fee of 95 DKK.

I suppose oriental buildings in theme parks are their equivalent of Sleeping Beauty’s castle in Tokyo Disneyland…

Surprisingly, the Chinese writings in the park are all pretty spot on

I took the S-Train from Copenhagen central station to my hotel two stops away. It cost 24 DKK (4.50 USD), but the interesting thing was that there was no gantry at either station! In fact, no one asked for the ticket at all for the entire journey. Either Danish people are all extremely honest or the train companies are losing a ton of money.

Panoramas

Made a few panoramas with the photos I took using my l33t Photoshop skillz.

Helsinki harbour

Fagernes, Norway

Fagernes, Norway

Fagernes, Norway

Laerdal, Norway

Oslo harbour

Copenhagen

Conclusion

My Scandinavia trip went okay.

Next up: Should I take CS106A or CS106X?

EDIT: Here’s a story I forgot to include. The immigration officer at Helsinki was being kind of a prick, probably because the queue was full of impatient Asian tourists. I couldn’t catch a sentence he said and he acted like I was retarded. He then stamped the immigration stamp on the LAST page of my passport. One week later, when I was departing from Copenhagen Airport, the Danish immigration officer couldn’t find the stamp and started flipping through my passport.

Me: Ummm… It’s on the last page.
Him: Last page? Huh? *Flips to last page*
Him: What an idiot. *Flips back to stamp on an appropriate page*
Me: LOL
Him: Those Finnish people, eh? *Shakes head*
Me: :D

In yet another breaking development that casts a blinding spotlight on the unrelenting passage of time and my lost teens, Maaya Sakamoto, my favourite singer in all dimensions of space and time, got married at the ripe age of 31 to fellow seiyuu Ken’ichi Suzumura.

Seriously, do you people realize that the 90s was like twenty years ago? It’s fricking insane. Maaya is basically old school now. I don’t even know the names of any voice actors nowadays. Get off my proverbial lawn you damn kids. I am having a quarter-life crisis.

Anyway, I had just returned from a trip to Hong Kong two days ago and spent today finishing up my packing for my imminent house-moving, so I didn’t notice this piece of gigantic news until Kurogane messaged me on Twitter.

There’s a short personal message on Maaya’s official news feed announcing that the wedding took place on 8th August (incidentally a rather auspicious date in some East Asian cultures):

今日はいつも応援してくださっている皆様に、ご報告したいことがありまãã€‚
私、坂本真綾は、８月８日に声優の鈴村健一さんと結婚しました。

今までの自分の人生の中で
好きだと思うことや、嬉しい、心地いいと思うことを優先ãã‚‹è¡Œå‹•ãŒ
いつも未来につながってきました。
だから結婚についても、
私がそうしたいと心から思えるときが自然と来たので
その気持ちに従いました。
鈴村さんは、一緒にいるととても穏やかな気持ちになれる、優しい人でãã€‚
これからも私が私らしく歌い、演じ、そして生きていくために、
心休まるパートナーが側にいてくれること、とても頼もしく思いまãã€‚
皆様にも、あたたかく見守っていただけたら嬉しいでãã€‚

これからもより一層仕事に励んでいきたいと思っておりまãã®ã§ã€
どうぞよろしくお願いいたしまãã€‚

坂本真綾

Today I have an announcement to make to everyone who has long supported me.
I, Maaya Sakamoto, was married to voice actor Ken’ichi Suzumura on August 8.

Throughout my life, prioritizing the things I like and the things that make me happy and feel at ease has always turned out to be the right path to my future.
So when it came to marriage, the feeling that this was the right time came naturally to me and I decided to follow it.
Suzumura-san is a kind person who makes me feel calm when we are together.
I believe that as I continue to sing, perform and be myself in the coming future, it will be great to have a supportive partner by my side.
I would be really glad if everyone would also continue to watch over us.

I hope to strive even harder in my work in the future, so please continue to lend me your support.

Maaya Sakamoto

Interestingly, as noted by Kurogane, Ken’ichi Suzumura voiced Shinn Asuka in Gundam SEED DESTINY, alongside Maaya who voiced Lunamaria Hawke. This is like Nadesico’s Ruri x Akito all over again. Although Nadesico is by now so old in Internet age that I don’t think anyone online knows what I am talking about.

Real-life parallels fiction

Now to be clear, this is not going to be a fanboy rage thing where I desperately struggle in a futile attempt to not have to confront reality because the marriage of my favourite singer somehow symbolizes the lost of a part of my comfort zone for the past decade. But I have to admit that the timing of this almost too perfectly coincides with the start of a new chapter of my life.

Human beings are superstitious creatures like it or not, and it’s not unreasonable to perceive mutual significance in unrelated events as long as we keep it to poetic musings.

I am actually quite happy for Maaya. 31 is kind of old for a woman to get married by Japanese standards and, in typical Japanese fashion, all sorts of social complexities evolve past 30 for a single working woman. Hope she continues to sing.

I guess officially Maaya Sakamoto is now Maaya Suzumura even though she probably keeps her maiden name as her stage name for branding purpose.

So I am moving soon and I have been spending the past week stacking things (mostly books) into boxes. Sifting through all the stuff I have accumulated in the past ten years really takes me back.

It’s been just about 10 years since I first watched Evangelion, which was kind of how everything began. I would link to my old blog post on it, but I wrote it on my old b2/cafelog (WordPress’ predecessor) blog and it’s stuck somewhere in my site database inside an unconverted b2 table. Just as well, since the post was probably shit.

Games and DVDs. An R1 Evangelion box set is buried somewhere underneath

I’m off to Stanford in just about a month or so and the house-moving will actually take place after I leave. The next time I set foot on Singapore, I’ll be walking into an unfamiliar room with all my precious stuff stacked in boxes covered with (at least) one year’s worth of dust. That ought to be fun.

Crap ton of Haruhi stuff

I am still hanging on to the slim hope that one day pristine limited edition Haruhi goods from the series’ golden age will be worth billions of dollars. But I think the chance that I will make a profit on this collection is probably only slightly higher than this guy’s long-shot investment.

Crap ton of Maaya Sakamoto stuff and other CDs

Honestly speaking, I think my Maaya collection can objectively be described as pretty darn sweet, especially considering I do not live in Japan. I basically have all her singles and albums (including her releases from when she was half of the teenage duo Whoops!!), often two copies of each, plus limited edition and all that jazz. I also have a bunch of posters that CD shops in Japan put up to promote her new CD releases, some related DVDs (including the short movie 03+ she starred in) and some concert memorabilia.

Bunch of manga and Japanese books

I am kind of a compulsive hoarder, but mainly in the sense that I like to collect more things. I don’t actually mind throwing away stuff I don’t need. Not shown in the pictures is a rather large mountain of old magazines and books that are destined for a glorious second life as rolls of toilet paper.

Random English books

Mahoro packed in her box

I actually do not own that many figurines in spite of my urge to collect stuff. PVC figures in particular do not preserve well in Singapore’s hot and humid weather unless you keep them in the box, so I had to throw away some over the years. But the few I keep around are pretty awesome. Maybe one day I’ll finally get a proper dust-proof display case for them and save them from the cruel fate of spending eternity in their boxes.

Kan’u Unchou and Tony Taka’s C73 releases

Haruhi Bunny and Tony Taka’s C75 releases

Going through my collection makes me feel old. I can’t believe that it’s already been a decade since Evangelion first raped my mind. A few days ago, I heard people on the radio reminiscing over 90s pop songs, referring to them as “retro”. Moments like that really turn your perspective upside down.

Speaking of Evangelion, check out my sweet new Esc key

I guess house-moving and college in the States are two huge changes waiting right around the corner that will mark an end of an era for me personally. I have no idea what the future will hold, but things are definitely going to be different soon. Part of me is feeling uneasy (and lazy) about the changes ahead, but mostly I am looking forward to California. Hopefully I will retain the essence of who I am, even as I grow into a new environment.

Manga and CDs

But no matter what happens, I’ll definitely still find time to finish the occasional volume of Kimi ga Iru Machi. That damn thing has more twists than a Taiwanese soap opera. I wonder if the San Francisco Kinokuniya is any good. I hope Maaya performs at Anime Expo again some day…

Anyway, I’ll be in Hong Kong from the 4th to the 10th and spend ten days in Scandinavia towards the end of the month. Things are getting kind of busy around here, but I’m sure I’ll be able to find the time to post some photos from the trips, even though I have yet to finish posting all the photos from my last trip in April…

This is the post about my visit to Kagoshima in southern Japan. I am really pushing out these articles at the breakneck speed of a limping three-legged turtle, considering that I was in Japan in early April and so far have written on barely two places. At this rate I should be done around the time I graduate from college.

The central train station

Kagoshima is not a super hot travel destination for foreign tourists, but I really loved it. It used to be rather inaccessible as you had to take a slow-ass 7-hour multiple-transfer train ride from Hakata, Fukuoka unless you take a direct domestic flight there, but now it’s a short 1.5-hour ride on the new Kyushu Shinkansen’s Sakura service.

Trams

Kagoshima prefecture is rather rural and the popular tourist locations (mostly natural sceneries) are spread quite far apart. You really need a rental car or a cab to access many of them, both of which are terribly expensive.

Fortunately, most of the places of interest (mostly historical sites) are located in Kagoshima City itself between the main Kagoshima-chuo station and the old Kagoshima station. There are multiple bus and tram lines serving all the tourist sites in the city, including the aquarium, the Tenmonkan shopping arcade, the Museum of Meiji Restoration and the ferry terminal to Sakurajima.

Kagoshima is similar to Nagasaki in that they both played incredibly huge roles at certain pivotal points of Japanese history and served as vital gateways to foreign influences, but are today rather small and laid-back cities that are not particularly well-known outside of Japan.

Kagoshima was once part of Satsuma-han, one of the many fiefdoms Japan was divided into before it was properly united. Satsuma-han led the Meiji Restoration in overthrowing the Tokugawa shogunate, restoring power to the emperor and uniting the Japan under a modern (for its time) constitutional monarchy modelled after Prussia, the first of its kind in Asia. As a result of Satsuma’s success, a disproportionate number of the important figures of government in the young Meiji government came from Satsuma, despite its relatively small size and its location far from the capital.

Saigo Takamori, one of the leading figures of Satsuma and the Meiji Restoration, and his dog. A statue of this can be found in Ueno Park

Satsuma-han was also the reason why modern Japan had a close relationship to the United Kingdoms up till WW2. During the reign of Tokugawa, Satsuma had a rather nationalist anti-foreigner streak and its members once assaulted and killed a British nobleman in Kanagawa (Namamugi Incident) for blocking the way of a feudal lord’s path. The British demanded compensation, but the Tokugawa shogunate was powerless to compel Satsuma to do anything. The Brits took things into their own hands and sailed from Yokohama to Kagoshima and bombarded the crap out of Satsuma’s technologically inferior coastal defences. After this large-scale equivalent of a drunken bar brawl (Anglo-Satsuma War), the obvious outcome was that Satsuma and the UK became Best Friends Forever.

Pew pew

After the battle, the UK saw in Satsuma a strong political faction that might grow to overthrow the corrupted and faltering Tokugawa government, while Satsuma realized that foreign barbarians had some good ideas after all, such as the technology to make cannons that could actually hit anything farther away than a fat guy standing in front of the barrel.

Statue outside Kagoshima-chuo station commemorating the 17 Satsuma scholars who studied overseas

This begrudging mutual acknowledge soon blossomed into a beautiful full-blown bromance. In a time when travelling to foreign countries was still forbidden by the Tokugawa shogunate, Satsuma secretly sneaked its people out to study at top universities in the UK, hence giving it a virtual monopoly of Western educated elites ready to run the government after the Meiji Restoration.

Interestingly, the Japanese national anthem “Kimigayo” was composed by a British military band officer who was helping Satsuma-han to train its own military band.

Gravestones of loyal Satsuma retainers

Okay this is turning into more of a history post than a trip report, but really the history is what makes Kagoshima so awesome in my opinion. There’s just something magical about how a bunch of people from a small geographically insignificant corner of Japan left such a great mark on the country’s history. And there are many historical and memorial sites scattered across Kagoshima City related to these figures. In particular, the Museum of Meiji Restoration is definitely worth a visit. It’s a rather small museum but its displays are all very informative. Of course, the English descriptions tend to be rather incomplete and you need to read Japanese to get the full details.

The Kagoshima aquarium was actually rather disappointing. I expected better given the city’s proximity to the sea and its location closer to the tropics, but Osaka’s Kaiyukan is many times better. Still, it’s worth a visit if you are into such things. There’s a regular dolphin show.

Similarly, the Tenmonkan shopping arcade is nothing to write home about. It’s a typical cluster of Japanese shopping arcades whose claim to fame is being situated on the ruins of an old 18th-century observatory, hence its name Tenmonkan (literally “Observatory”). Well, there’s an Animate located there too.

Animate is everywhere

Outside of the city, the only place that is really accessible without a car is Ibusuki, a small coastal onsen town about an hour by train away from Kagoshima-chuo. It feels basically like Hakone but next to the sea instead of mountains. Although you get to try sunamushi onsen, which is basically getting your whole body buried in hot volcanic soil for 15 minutes. It’s like onsen without the water. I tried it and it’s not nearly as exotic an experience as it looks.

My room in Ibusuki

A park outside the inn at Ibusuki

Many people can’t figure out what this picture is showing

Awesome dinner

And of course, there is Japan’s southernmost JR train station for those who are as dorky as me.

Come to think of it, Kagoshima is the perfect location for an anime. It has the small-town feel, plenty of scenic spots, electric trams, an aquarium and that huge ass volcanic Sakurajima in the background. Wonder why it doesn’t show up more often…

I was bored yesterday and wrote a little summary of my thoughts for the future. This was partially inspired by the upcoming Singapore General Election taking place tomorrow and a certain online conservation I had with someone. After I finished writing it, I realized that it bears some similarities to the Dune timeline, so perhaps I was just agreeing with Frank Herbert.

In a future when all jobs of lower complexity than astrophysicists have been replaced by robots, conglomerates that own robots and their patents will reap the benefit of virtually all economic activities on the planet, while regular people can offer no value to the system. A tiny number of humans hold the few high-complexity jobs needed and are genetically superior in those roles due to generations of selection.

The masses soon realize that they have been made obsolete. A neo-Marxist revolution sweeps across the planet and great wars are fought, but the many cannot defeat the few. The corporations have centuries of technological advantage in their favour and their self-replicating machines swiftly put an end to the insurrections. The rebels are disarmed and ejected from the system.

With its obsolescence made official, most of humanity slowly regresses to pre-industrial subsistence-level economies. Civilization for most returns to small isolated communities. Even basic technology like fossil fuels and computers disappear with time because the exploitation of the planet’s natural resources is monopolized by the corporations whose robotic armies forcefully defend their subjectless fiefdoms.

The corporations wall themselves off in massive robotized vertical cities and mostly ignore the rest of humanity, occasionally sending expeditions into the wild to harvest feral human specimens for body parts and genetic material or clearing land to make room for industrial expansion.

Eventually, the corporate overlords evolve into a symbiotic relationship with machines and cease to be fully organic, gaining in the process physiological traits suitable for deep space voyages that cannot be duplicated organically. The evolved humanity leaves Earth after its crust has been almost completely emptied of useful compounds and before it is consumed by a dying sun. To the stars!

In the alternate timeline, Earth takes a hit from a giant meteor and humanity goes extinct in 2012.

I suppose the real alternative scenario is some kind of socialist paradise where the combined productivity of machines is more than sufficient to be distributed evenly across a humanity and free it from its eternal struggle to earn a living to either drown in hedonistic pleasures or pursue knowledge and science.

And I suppose this is more likely to happen if advancements and breakthroughs in technology are made accessible to everyone rapidly enough that no single sub-community has enough time to build a giant army of self-replicating killer robots before the rest have at least learnt how to build regular killer robots. Perhaps this is the real reason why patent terms should be as short as possible.

Just think about it. One day, a corporation similar to Isaac Asimov’s U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc. will be making tons of robots and conducting massive research into robotics and A.I. Everyone will think that robots are super awesome, so whenever Robotics Inc. sues some small-time robotics lab for infringing one of its ten trillion patents, people will just go “oh Sony Robots Inc., you so crazy” and return to enjoying their cup of coffee brewed by their robot butler while posting silly crap like this on Facetablet (because the concept of books no longer exist of course).

Eventually Robotics Inc. decides that it is no longer in its economic interest to have customers when they reach the tipping point where they can just make robots to create wealth passively. And before you know it, everyone else has been made obsolete.

Okay, so the real future will probably be somewhat different. But putting aside the details, let’s consider the big picture and the natural of power dynamics in human societies.

Kings and emperors derived their power from the people. People were stupider and more ignorant in the past, so this mandate was easy to get through coercion. Eventually, this transformed into a more democratic and equal relationship and we now have the idea of a “social contract” between the government and its people. But still, the point is that people living at the top of social hierarchies are rich and comfortable only because people below them are economically productive. Smart kings, presidents, CEOs and even dictators all recognize this fact and therefore seek to retain the loyalty and productivity of their subjects, citizens and workers through either incentives or threats.

But technology changes this relationship. Every worker replaced by a robot is one whose opinions and needs no longer matter to the person at the top. Today a person can operate a crane to do what once required dozens of people to perform. With an army of robots, it is not inconceivable for a single person or corporation to someday run an entire economy. Capitalism kind of breaks down in that system, because that corporation will no longer need consumers. Money and wealth are ultimately just means to secure an end in an economy of many productive parties, but this hypothetical corporation is basically omnipotent and needs nothing from others.

Sure, we are far from this scenario as long as artificial intelligence remains as crappy as it is today. But consider the effects of globalization: we have increasing rich-poor divides because people higher up in the economic hierarchy benefit greatly from moving low-skill jobs to the third world while people at the lower end are mostly screwed. Think third-world sweat shops are unfair competition? Just imagine what will happen when we have self-replicating, self-maintaining robot workers.

Everyone needs a college degree to get a job now. When the economy becomes fully automated, every remaining job will require at least a PhD. There certainly won’t be enough of such positions to go around for 10 billion people unless we expand massively into space.

Actually this is sounding more and more like the fundamental ideas behind Marxism, but with robots. Oh shit.

Sometimes I think crazy. I think I’m probably missing some key argument. The future can’t be that bleak.

So not too long ago, I was in Kagoshima, the southernmost prefecture on Japan’s four main islands. It is a rather backwater place despite the abnormally large role it played in Japan’s contemporary history, but it is very beautiful.

Kagoshima is also the location of Nishi-oyama Station, Japan Railways’ (JR) southernmost train station.

Located in the southern part of Kagoshima with a latitude of 31.11 degrees north, Nishi-oyama Station is not much more than an sheltered slab of concrete with a single wooden bench.

Some JR maintenance people were there doing some work

8 train services per day in one direction. Woot

Facing west at the station gives one a pretty grand view of Mt. Kaimon, a perfectly conical dormant volcano that apparently has the exact same silhouette no matter which direction you view it from. (Taxi drivers are pretty helpful when it comes to sightseeing.)

JR also placed a helpful signboard that indicates the location of its easternmost, westernmost and northernmost train stations. There were actually two Japanese tourists taking photos at Nishi-oyama when I was there. Being a train otaku in Japan is serious business.

There is also a yellow post box that lets you send letters and postcards to your friends and families with a special postmark indicating that it was sent from Nishi-oyama. You can probably send one to yourself and win the race home.

The surrounding area is nothing but farms and hills. Presumably many of the farms grow a variant of sweet potato known as satsumaimo, a speciality of Kagoshima. I bought some satsumaimo-flavoured Kit Kats at the central train station.

A farm right next to the station

The southern part of Kagoshima is divided into two areas by a deep inlet forming the Kagoshima Bay and is hence shaped like a crescent. The left side is known as the Satsuma Peninsula (薩摩半島) and the right side is known as the Osumi Peninsula (大隅半島).

Most of the tourist stuff, including Kagoshima City, Sakurajima (the volcanic island) and the onsen town Ibusuki, is on the Satsuma side, while Osumi is mostly an inaccessible jungle of weird boars and demons. At least that’s what I think it’s like, considering there are basically zero train lines running through it.

But Osumi does play host to Cape Sata (Japan mainland’s southernmost point) and JAXA’s Uchinoura Space Center, which would probably be cool to visit if they were ever made reasonably accessible. Woot.

But I digress.

Scenic spots on the Satsuma Peninsula

Much of Satsuma Peninsula itself is also rather inaccessible and rural, but it does have a single JR train line serving its southern parts. So I guess that is something.

And when I say “train”, I am not talking about JR Yamanote or even your typical subway train. The local Ibusuki-Makurazaki line is served by tiny two-carriage trains that are operated by a single person. JR call these trains ワンマン, literally “one-man”. There are usually two trains per hour.

The white one-man train on the local lines. That’s basically half the train right there

The tourists who take this line are generally headed for Ibusuki (指宿), a small onsen town by the sea more than an hour away from Kagoshima-chou Station. And by “tourists”, I mean old Japanese couples from other parts of Japan.

I could not identify a single foreign tourist during my stay at Ibusuki and my train rides there and back, although I did spot a few in Kagoshima City itself. This can also be observed from Japan Guide’s wholly inadequate section on Kagoshima, which I feel doesn’t do the prefecture/city justice.

But I digress again.

Yamakawa bills itself as “JR’s Southernmost Manned Station”

Scenic spots along the Ibusuki-Makurazaki line between Yamakawa and Nishi-oyama stations

The regular trains on the Ibusuki Makurazaki line terminate at either Kiire (喜入) or Yamakawa (山川). Unforunately, Nishi-Oyama, the southernmost station, is located father down the line and is served by just two direct trains a day from the central station. Due to a lack of prior planning, I did not have time to actually take a train there, sadly.

I want to say that I was hardcore enough to navigate 6km over mountainous terrain to get from Yamakawa to Nishi-oyama (which I almost did because I thought it was at most 2km away in a straight line) armed with only my Android smartphone’s Compass app and no data access, but I was a pussy and took a cab instead (which in retrospect was not such a bad idea).

It turned out to be impossible to follow the track on foot as I had originally planned because it is fenced off and goes into tunnels.

All the stations on the line passed Yamakawa are unmanned, so the train driver has to also act as the conductor at every stop. It’s pretty cool.

The title of this post is kind of a lie because Nishi-oyama is no longer Japan’s southernmost station after Okinawa prefecture built a local monorail line in Naha due to what I presume to be immense spite for JR that I am sure has nothing to do with making life more convenient for its residents.

Hence, Nishi-oyama is now “Japan’s Southernmost JR Station”. You can see the faint red “JR” spray-painted onto the top of the landmark.

Apparently, JR originally changed the sign to “Mainland’s Southernmost Station” in response to the construction of the monorail, which incurred Okinawa’s wrath because it implies that Okinawa isn’t part of Japan mainland. (And I thought the Ryukyu separatists would be happy about that…) JR then changed it back to the original sign with the red word “JR” appended to the front. People fight over everything.

I really loved Kagoshima. Will blog more about it in a future post.

The section of the Kyushu Shinkansen that extents to Kagoshima-chuo Station only came online less than two weeks before my trip to Japan, so it was really lucky that I got to visit Kagoshima with my JR Pass.

P.S. This JR Kyushu commercial celebrating the full opening of the Kyushu Shinkansen is really awesome. Brings a tear to my eyes. Pity they had to stop airing it and tone down the celebrations after the Tohoku quake.

So I am finally back in Singapore. Experiencing post-trip lethargy as usual. I figure I should get started on blogging now before it becomes impossible for me to return to my usual weekly schedule and I fall into the eternal dark void of procrastination.

Nagasaki was the first city in Kyushu I really visited, not counting a short transit at Fukuoka, and it was pretty awesome.

Nagasaki is a great place to visit if you are interested in Japanese history. The port city played an important role in the development of Japan leading up to and beyond the Meiji Restoration because it was more or less the only place in Japan that permitted foreign presence during more than two centuries of self-imposed isolation under the Tokugawa shogunate. Influence from Dutch and Chinese traders can be seen in many parts of the city’s culture and history.

Dejima

Dejima was an artificial island used to house Portuguese traders and later Dutch traders after the Portuguese were barred from the country because their missionary efforts were stirring unrest. The island is more well-known for the period of time when the Dutch inhabited it and therefore it is also called the “Dutch Factory”. The senior Dutch trader in charge of Dejima was called the chief factor. lol.

Dutch bottles for transporting sake and soy sauce

Formal European dinning room…with tatami

The chief factor’s quarters

Wonder if they wore shoes on tatami

A more traditional room inhabited by Japanese Dejima officials

Model of Dejima

A Lefaucheux revolver found at Dejima

I learnt about Dejima in school and thought it was kind of cool. In an age with limited means of communication, a physical moat was all it took to restrict cultural exchange between the foreign traders and the rest of Japan. But despite the forced isolation, Dejima and its Dutch inhabitants still managed to eventually influence the development of academia and knowledge in Japan, to the point that 蘭学 (rangaku, literally “Dutch study”) became a term for the study of science.

Still, I was kind of disappointed to find out that the original Dejima had been long gone by the 20th century after the opening of Japan. The sea around it was reclaimed into the modern harbor area and Dejima itself became just another plot of land. The current Dejima is a reconstruction that resulted from post-war excavations and research and it is a work-in-progress with many buildings not yet fully restored.

Also, I am reminded of that Dutch ambassador character from Samurai Champloo. Heh.

Gunkanjima

What is it with Nagasaki and squeezing people onto tiny islands, I wonder? A mostly artificial coal-mining island-city that once boasted the highest population density in the world, it is today a huge urban ruin and a nice sightseeing spot. Read more about it in my earlier post.

Chinatown

Nagasaki was a port for trading with China for centuries and features plenty of Chinese influences such as its specialty dish Champon. Therefore, it came as quite a surprise to discover that the city’s famous Chinatown is really just two short streets joined in a cross. Although I didn’t really like Yokohama’s Chinatown because it felt like an artificial gathering of tourist traps, at least it was pretty big.

On hindsight, this shouldn’t have been unexpected given that Yokohama has a population of more than 3 million while Nagasaki has fewer than 500 thousand. There are quite a number of wards in Tokyo that are more populated than that…

Not Chinatown, but there’s a Confucius temple nearby

Christianity

Although Christianity landed in Kagoshima first in the form of Francis Xavier, it was in Nagasaki where it really took off due to Portuguese’s mixing of missionary work and trade that eventually led to their expulsion. Initially permitted, Christianity was subsequently banned by the shogunate for inducing subversive sentiments. The converts went into hiding and became known as Kakure Kirishitan or hidden Christians. After the Meiji Restoration brought Western-style religious freedom, these communities came out of hiding and built various churches and Christian monuments in Nagasaki.

Oura Catholic Church

During the years of persecution, many of these Kakure Kirishitan carried with them small statues apparently depicting the Buddhist goddess Kannon carrying an infant in her arms. This was meant to be the Virgin Mary but made to look like Kannon in order to fool the authorities.

And in a somewhat ironic twist, the Urakami Cathedral, built after 30 years of hard work by former Kakure Kirishitan enjoying their newfound religious freedom and the largest church in East Asia at the time, was completely destroyed by the plutonium atomic bomb that detonated just a few hundred metres from its former location.

Peace Memorial

Unfortunately, Nagasaki always seems to play second fiddle to Hiroshima when it comes to atomic history, perhaps because Hiroshima was bombed first or perhaps because Hiroshima today is a much larger city. This difference is also reflected in the resources dedicated to their respective peace memorials. That said, the Nagasaki memorial and its associated museum are still very educational and interesting places to visit.

A replica of one of the statures at Urakami Cathedral

A 1:1 model of Fat Man, the plutonium bomb

Singapore falls

The hypocenter/ground zero

For some reason, the Peace Park near the memorial features a cluster of statures donated by countries that formerly belonged to the Communist bloc, including China, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and the German Democratic Republic. Perhaps it was some kind of Cold War up-yours attempt at reminding the world that as crappy as Communism may be, at least it wasn’t the side responsible for using nuclear weapons against civilians.

This slightly-weird looking stature is the main stature in the park meant to commemorate the bombing. It is rather huge. Its Japanese sculptor intended for it to evoke the features of both Jesus and Buddha. The stature’s right hand points at the threat of atomic bombs from above while its left hand gestures for peace.

Mt. Inasa

Nagasaki’s night view from on top of Mt. Inasa is widely known as one of Japan’s top three night views alongside Kobe and Hakodate. I originally didn’t plan to go up there because the mountain is rather far from the rest of the locations, but a friendly taxi driver offered to take me and my friend up there and to a few other scenic spots for quite a good price. It was quite lucky of us because the view was really breathtaking.

Nagasaki city is located in by a bay surrounded by mountains. Other than the harbour area built on reclaimed flat land, the entire city is built on slopes. This is why almost nobody in Nagasaki rides a bicycle compared to most Japanese cities. Imagine the typical claustrophobic Japanese suburban streets that can barely fit one car. Now imagine them swirling around across the side of a mountain. Many of the houses in Nagasaki are not even accessible by cars and the inhabitants have to walk home from the nearest bus stop.

The flip side of this inconvenient city layout is the awesome night view. From atop Mt. Inasa, you look down towards a flat bay area, where the taller commercial buildings are. Other than the exit to the sea, the bay area is surrounded by mountain ranges and the sides of the mountains are littered with tens of thousands of household lights. Quite a different experience from the usual city night view comprising of high-rise buildings. Unfortunately, my crappy photos don’t really capture the awe-inspiring feeling.

More photos

For some reason, western Japan loves electric trams

The Kinokuniya is smaller than Singapore’s…

Ate soba with wasabi so fresh you have to shave it yourself

The scourge of AKB48 corrupts even Kyushu

Former British consulate

This person seeks election on an anti-Shinkansen platform

A nearby all-girls school…

My only real complaint about Nagasaki is that it is a bloody pain to access. The nearest Shinkansen station is Hakata, Fukuoka and it takes more than two hours by regular express train to get to Nagasaki station from there. The train ride is pretty bumpy and uncomfortable.

Still, a pretty awesome city to visit. Probably not so great to live in considering how hilly it is.